Not directly about surf but could relate to the “commute” to surf! If this is real its time to buy stock.
Water electrolysis has been around for a while for powering cars etc. I believe there is a test program in SoCal where they have set up hydrogen gas stations for test hydrogen cars. Toyota maybe?
The exhaust from these cars really is water. Maybe not so clean that you’d want to drink it but mostly water.
The nice thing about it is that there is no need for tanker trucks to refuel these gas stations. They are supplied with electricity and water and perform the electrolysis on site storing the hydrogen. The hydrogen is then pumped into the cars gas tank which is a super pourous structure coated in platinum. The platinum works as a catalyst for some reaction that stores the hydrogen as a solid (not sure what reaction this is.) This ensures that you don’t drive around in your own Hindenburgh. In fact it’s safer than all other fuel sources I believe.
Of course this is not really any greener than other energy sources. The energy used to split the water still comes from a coal or nuclear power plant somewhere where it spews pollutants into the air or has to have spent fuel rods stored for a few thousand years.
But it would help out in smog ridden cities since power plants are usually in someone elses backyard.
Also, the gas tanks are expensive I believe though maybe more efficient milage wise than electric cars. Of course it’s easier to set up an electric gas station than a hydrogen one. Also I believe electric cell cars are cheaper if shorter range. That’s why you see electric as the future fuel choice most of the time.
Or worse, a hybrid which still burns petroleum. Just because it has an electric motor doesn’t mean it’s exhaust doesn’t smell.
For milage you just can’t beat petroleum, at least for now. It’s such a high yield/volume power source it’s hard to beat.
What I want to know is why that cutter tip wasn’t hot. You would think that even if the flame wasn’t near the tip it would still get hot just from radiation or something. Also his electrolysis machine probably stores the oxygen from the reaction as well and uses it to make such a hot flame.
As Kai says, electrolysing water, splitting it into hydrogen ( two of 'em ) and oxygen( one) has been around for quite a while. One notable setup is in Iceland where they have what’s the equivalent of neighborhood gas stations with electrolysing plants right there -more on that in a bit -
But note the term, electrolysing: you have to pump electricity into the water to break those atoms apart. Which means you need electricity. How much electricity? heh- well, you don’t get something for nothing, this is science and not a game show - you pump in as much electrical power to break 'em apart as combining them again will get you. You want to get enough power to run your hydrogen car 100 miles? You need to use up that much electric power…and more. Quite a lot more.
The electricity has to be generated ( with efficency losses in that generating process as a necessary part of how heat engines work ) plus sent to the neighborhood electrolysing plant ( with what are called ‘line losses’ involved in sending that power from big generator to the plant) .
And then there is the inefficiency involved in the hydrogen powered engine itself. Huh? Right - see, in any Carnot Cycle heat engine, which includes gasoline engines in cars, diesels, steam engines, turbines, Stirling hot gas engines, you name it, the maximum efficiency percentage it can have is found by
efficiency% = 1 - (T low/T high)
Where the temperatures T high and T low are the high and low temps in the engine, measured in absolute degrees, like absolute zero kind of stuff, degrees Kelvin.
The greater the difference in temps, the more efficient. And no internal combustion engine in any vehicle does a whole lot better than ( remembering rough numbers) 30%. Big power plants like electric power stations run more efficiently by a fair amount. But you are still throwing away a lot.
So if you had a gallon of oil, lets say. You burn it to make electricity ( lets say that big power plant is 45% efficient) , move that power over power lines ( call it 10% line losses) and then use it to make hydrogen ( lets be nice and call that 90% efficient) and then burn it in the hydrogen engine at around 35% efficiency. Whaddya got?
Well, that’s ( .45 x .9 x.9 x .35 ) …
that’s around 12.9%… not so great.
Iceland can afford it. They have hydroelectric plants and geothermal plants up the gazoo and more geo and hydro souces than you can shake an oil barrel at, so they have electricity in plenty. And their goal is to import zero oil or coal as fuels.
Most other places, though, it’s a problem. One particularly silly approach ( in the US, guess who is pushing that one) is to make hydrogen in great big hydrogen plants from …you may wonder about the ‘intelligence’ behind this one… oil . And then haul it around in some refrigerated tank trucks. Yeah, that’s gonna solve LOTS of problems, right?
Now, I don’t know if the guy mentioned in the original article has come across some sort of catalyst that would somehow allow the hydrogen and oxygen to be broken apart much cheaper in terms of energy use. If he has, that would be quite a step. But the overall process is still very, very inefficient.
better to use a bicycle…
doc…
If efficiency can be high enough, small generating stations i.e make your own run off solar cells or wind generator? Then pretty green
For milage you just can’t beat petroleum, at least for now. It’s such a high yield/volume power source it’s hard to beat.
I disagree.
I ran my diesel truck on dino for the first 6600 miles to break in the seals, as suggested. Now I run it on B100 - pure biodiesel from soy, canola, and rapeseed oils.
By the computer, I went from 16.5 mpg to 19.1. I’m over 10K miles on it now. Occasionally, I run out of fuel when the little bio speakeasies aren’t open and I have to put in a few gallons of petro diesel - sure enough, mileage suffers.
A similar 3/4 ton 4 wheel drive pickup running gasoline gets around 11 mpg. Bio beats petro hands down.
Biodiesel produces no soot or particulates in the exhaust. Basic fire science tells us that means that combustion is more complete. Less unburnt hydrocarbons. Diesel engines were originally designed to run on vegetable oils anyway.
We’re stuck with dino diesel now because they make it as a by-product of making gasoline. And demand for it is low enough that supply can be accomodated this way. But with the introduction in CA & the northeast of clean burning diesel technology, hopefully we’ll see more demand for diesel and less for gas. By producing less gas, and requiring more diesel, we’ll probably see increased use of biodiesel.
Biodiesel certainly produces carbon dioxide when you burn it, like any carbon-based fuel. But the plants you grow to make the biodiesel suck in carbon & give out oxygen until they’re harvested. You end up with carbon neutrailty. Can’t say there’s any carbon balance to taking oil or coal out of the ground.
Biodiesel doesn’t require much electricity to produce, and what it does require can be generated on-site by diesel generators.
Sorry to ramble, I’m a believer. Energy independence, carbon neutrality, better efficiency and longer engine life…it all adds up to a pretty nice picture.
I bet you’d be surprised to find that biodiesel is available right now, someplace near you (in the US)…
http://www.biodiesel.org/…ngsites/default.shtm
I have a friend who works at one of the Bay Area’s National Nuclear research laboratories. His job is designing hydrogen fuel storage tanks & delivery systems.
I asked him Sunday while we were surfing if he is a believer, or if its just a job. He thought for a moment and admitted he doesn’t quite drink the Kool-Aid. He said it might be a component of the future of energy - maybe good for things like local production of electricity for high-rise buildings or something - but not probably practical as a vehicle fuel. But very sexy for policitians to chuck $$ at…
For now, I’m pretty happy that I’m neither lining the pockets of oil company executives nor contributing to wars nor accelerating global warming, while I drive to the beach.
Aren’t diesel engines more efficient in general? Higher compression, higher heat. Is your truck tuned for biodiesel or just normal diesel?
I was listening to a show about corn ethanol additive on NPR the other day. They say the conversion from the 15% ethanol blend to a 70% blend would be easy to retrofit in existing cars. However, while it is a cleaner burning gas the amount of pollution created during refinement is more or less polluting, depending on who you ask.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5173420
Whatever energy solutions we come up with the more we use it the better we will get at it be it hydrogen, electricity, plant alcohols and oils.
Atm though we bash nuclear energy while burning coal and natural gas for most of our nations power which doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. We know coal and natural gas pollute, constantly. A slow death or a fast dramatic one? We know we can get better at nuclear waste disposal though. And actually I’ve heard that there are methods for cleaner coal burning but little interest in actually doing so since the plants are in place and the profits are being made.
A lack of a clear path and no nuclear/coal in my backyard were big reasons behind the lack of new power plant production that caused the California energy crisis.
Ethanol is probably going to be part of the picture. Bushco likes it and Halliburton knows how to make it.
The good: Reduces dependence on foreign oil, keeps congressionally-subsidized corn farmers in business (which biodiesel would do as well), easy to mod most (less than 10 - year old) gas cars to use it.
The bad: Uses large quantities of electricity to convert corn sugars to fuel - electricity generated by coal (the US has the world’s largest coal reserves); tech is easy to export & not strategically dangerous (China has the world’s SECOND largest coal reserves). NOT carbon-neutral, when production is factored in.
So yes, better than gasoline. But not as good as biodiesel.
Methanol is easier to make and much easier to store (ethanol can evaporate through most metal & plastic containers - imagine storing the nation’s fuel supplies in glass bottles!) and may be another viable intermediary product. Storing energy is a big part of the problem - how many batteries would you like today, sir? - and methanol can later (off-season, for example) be used to produce electricity or even ethanol. There is also some promising research in using cellulose ethanol (wood alcohol) instead of sugar ethanol, in that cellulose does much better on the carbon exchange while it’s growing and converts a little easier to fuel - the trick is in the fermenting.
IMHO, India will emerge as a biofuel leader. Their economy is growing almost as fast as China’s but they can’t compete for foreign oil with China, the EU, and the US. They do enjoy abundant labor, cropland, and water - all necessary for biofuel production. They have good diesel-dependent infrastructure, in terms of power plants, trains, and buses all of which run on diesel. Once the world sees how a second-world economy like theirs can move towards energy independence, the economics will prevail in other places as well.
The big piece missing from the golbal warming debate, of course, is deforestation and land armoring. Pavement & concrete are heat sinks which give off the sun’s heat all night long, causing a loss of the world’s ability to cool itself when the sun goes down. And too much carbon in the atmosphere? = plant more plants and stop cutting down trees. But no, more profits in drilling in the ocean and in wildlife preserves. And in selling sun lotion.
Sorry - this thread is going pretty far from surfing. But global warming - and rising ocean levels - shouldn’t ever be far from a surfer’s thoughts.
Go one step further…or less…
Biodiesel involves chemically breaking down triacylglycerides to long chain fatty acid esters of low alcohols (usually methyl, occasional ethyl). Herein lies the energy consumption and need for chemicals that can be costly to manufacture.
But, as mentioned, the very first diesel engine appeared at the world fair running on peanut oil.
Modern day diesel engines are designed to work with the lower viscosity petroleum based diesel. BUT, with a few inline heaters, apparently alot of these engines can run on straight veg oil, i.e. the only processing costs are the oil processing costs; no chemical processes to reduce molecular weight and viscosity.
Have a friend; last year he bought an import toyota van from Japan; van 15 years old now. After about 1500$ goofing around with a conversion kit, some inline heaters, getting a microporous wand and an electrical pump and securing a relationship with a restaurant with good fryer oil now doesn’t go to the pump. Ever, well…almost. In the last 25,000km (he’s driven alot this year) he’s gone to the pump twice. He has to run on diesel (or bio) to start the engine and get everything up to temperature, and then again briefly before shutting it off, but the rest is filtered fryer grease that would likely otherwise end up in a landfill or going through some type of energy intensive reclamation process.
And that’s free fuel…more energy neutral than biodiesel. Cleaner? Prolly not, but he’s not belching black smoke like I see alot of 1980’s era diesels doing either…
http://www.grist.org/advice/ask/2005/03/17/umbra-svoschool/
check it out. I laud my friend Ian’s commitment to this endeavor. Not for me right now, but in the future? Likely. Didn’t have the luxury of alot of cash for the most recent car purchase. Also wasn’t thrilled with the fact that for the most part (the TDI jetta’s being the exception), most of the diesel vehicles in the NA market are HUGE compared to my needs. Furthermore, I know of at least one town in BC where there are enough people giving this kind of approach a go that there aren’t enough restaurants or fryer vats to gas everyone up. That said, cutting one energy and chemically intensive step out of the fuel manufacture process saves alot in the end…
The flip side of the coin is that beyond the fact that you’re still burning hydrocarbons and creating CO2, because of the increased heat/pressure in the combustion chamber, diesel engines tend to produce more NOx (i.e. smog, which can be detected, though often not seen at the tailpipe) and often CO. “Burning” a fuel is certainly not the way to greener transport, but burning the “right” fuel may be less detrimental.
HTH
G
No argument from here, GWN. But…fuel line heaters, vegtherms, pony tanks, and switches would put me in a place where GM would take one look and chase me away if I ever brought it in for warranty work Way too much warranty time left & money spent to risk that just yet… I do have quite a few friends running on grease, though. Know a lot who also run their Mercedes boat engines on it with great success.
For a while in the 60’s they put a Nissan inline 6 diesel in the Scout & Scout II. Those are very popular with the Marin Co. boating/surfing/junkyard crowd these days. Toyota still sells a diesel Landcruiser in every contry but the US as well… wanna import me one?
After my trip to Cali this year, I have to chuckle when you guys talk about fuel efficency. Compared to the rest of the world you drive tanks. Never mind 11mpg. A fuel efficient car in Europe is talking 40-50mpg.
Locally after the collapse of our sugar beet industry last year, most of the farmers have replaced beet with rape to produce bio diesel.
Someone posted a link around here a long time ago that chronicled some surfers surfing from Washington to Mexico in a vegi oil truck. Don’t remember who sponsored it or the link though.
Burnsie is right on: when I see a Prius claiming 50 mpg I laugh my ass off: that’s probalby average in Europe, with conventional engines (not Hybrid).
Fuel consumption here in CA is ridicolous, and the best part is that mos californians would tell you that the regulations here are extremely strict, and you can only drive eco-friendly vehicles. Yeah, Right.
on a side note, I read on an asian paper that GM is going to subsidize part of the cost of gas if you buy some models (like a Suburban or a Hummer). I think that’s CRIMINAL, I can’t believe they can get away with that.
I first read this article in the early eighties in a very obscure magazine:
http://www.hasslberger.com/tecno/hydrogen.html
…and I always wondered if anyone else had ever tried it.
Regarding fuel line heaters and anti-gelling additives - for diesel, that’s old and well-established tech. But I’m constrained to put in a word for thermal depolymerization (TDP) here. Wikipedia entry: http://tinyurl.com/4fk7m The input is raw landfill garbage and other offal (last I checked, there was an ample supply) and the output is light crude equivalent to what we now import - it can go right into existing cracking plants with minimal “retuning”. NTM that the TDP plant is completely self-sufficient - it runs on combustible gas that is a by-product of the waste processing. Cost? It’s difficult to get a trustworthy accounting on that issue from any of the current players in this field, but it appears to be slightly more than what we paid for crude at its recent peak. I believe that both ethanol and biodiesel are both currently loss-subsidized. Downside? Nothing is perfect. In the case of TDP, because the end product is the same gasoline and diesel that we use now, there is no intrinsic reduction in emissions at the consumer level. However, since the supply chain is much shorter, you reduce pollution from transport of the raw and finished materials. You avoid much of the pollution side effects from the massive capital construction required for many of the other alternatives (ntm avoiding the massive capital costs). And you can eliminate the financial and emissions costs of global military adventurism that accrue from petroleum supply strategy. Last, but not least, you consume and clean up materials that are pollution sources in their own right. Not a 100% complete or perfect solution - what is - but very promising.
-Samiam
ED for clarity - the orange text referred to competition between advocates of different gasoline alternatives, not among TDP companies (afaik there is only one currently, Changing World). On re-reading, I did not think that was clearly written) - S.
As Kai says, electrolysing water, splitting it into hydrogen ( two of 'em ) and oxygen( one) has been around for quite a while. One notable setup is in Iceland where they have what’s the equivalent of neighborhood gas stations with electrolysing plants right there -more on that in a bit -
But note the term, electrolysing: you have to pump electricity into the water to break those atoms apart. Which means you need electricity. How much electricity? heh- well, you don’t get something for nothing, this is science and not a game show - you pump in as much electrical power to break 'em apart as combining them again will get you. You want to get enough power to run your hydrogen car 100 miles? You need to use up that much electric power…and more. Quite a lot more.
The electricity has to be generated ( with efficency losses in that generating process as a necessary part of how heat engines work ) plus sent to the neighborhood electrolysing plant ( with what are called ‘line losses’ involved in sending that power from big generator to the plant) .
And then there is the inefficiency involved in the hydrogen powered engine itself. Huh? Right - see, in any Carnot Cycle heat engine, which includes gasoline engines in cars, diesels, steam engines, turbines, Stirling hot gas engines, you name it, the maximum efficiency percentage it can have is found by
efficiency% = 1 - (T low/T high)
Where the temperatures T high and T low are the high and low temps in the engine, measured in absolute degrees, like absolute zero kind of stuff, degrees Kelvin.
The greater the difference in temps, the more efficient. And no internal combustion engine in any vehicle does a whole lot better than ( remembering rough numbers) 30%. Big power plants like electric power stations run more efficiently by a fair amount. But you are still throwing away a lot.
So if you had a gallon of oil, lets say. You burn it to make electricity ( lets say that big power plant is 45% efficient) , move that power over power lines ( call it 10% line losses) and then use it to make hydrogen ( lets be nice and call that 90% efficient) and then burn it in the hydrogen engine at around 35% efficiency. Whaddya got?
Well, that’s ( .45 x .9 x.9 x .35 ) …
that’s around 12.9%… not so great.
Iceland can afford it. They have hydroelectric plants and geothermal plants up the gazoo and more geo and hydro souces than you can shake an oil barrel at, so they have electricity in plenty. And their goal is to import zero oil or coal as fuels.
Most other places, though, it’s a problem. One particularly silly approach ( in the US, guess who is pushing that one) is to make hydrogen in great big hydrogen plants from …you may wonder about the ‘intelligence’ behind this one… oil . And then haul it around in some refrigerated tank trucks. Yeah, that’s gonna solve LOTS of problems, right?
Now, I don’t know if the guy mentioned in the original article has come across some sort of catalyst that would somehow allow the hydrogen and oxygen to be broken apart much cheaper in terms of energy use. If he has, that would be quite a step. But the overall process is still very, very inefficient.
better to use a bicycle…
doc…
Honda is apparently comitted to hydrogen fueled cars in the future. They will be delivering the first of 200 hydrogen-powered, fuel-cell based cars to the LA area next month (location chosen since hydrogen fueling stations are present in that area).
http://electronicdesign.com/…&ArticleID=19223
From the hydrogen fuel consumed, and loss/efficiency factors, the EPA rates the mileage as the equivalent of 74 mpg for a conventional fueled car. I don’t think you’ll be saving much money in travel costs as the lease cost is $600/mo.
Burnsie is right on: when I see a Prius claiming 50 mpg I laugh my ass off: that’s probalby average in Europe, with conventional engines (not Hybrid).
Fuel consumption here in CA is ridicolous, and the best part is that mos californians would tell you that the regulations here are extremely strict, and you can only drive eco-friendly vehicles. Yeah, Right.
on a side note, I read on an asian paper that GM is going to subsidize part of the cost of gas if you buy some models (like a Suburban or a Hummer). I think that’s CRIMINAL, I can’t believe they can get away with that.
Yes in europe a prius is not a very good deal! It’s still cleaner that all other cars, but it’s a really expensive car. And the price of gasoline is here much higher than diesel, so you’re still way cheaper off with a diesel car.
@ your second issue: They can only get away with that in the US
personally I hope this crisis buries the majority of the big 5.
that’s what they get for cockblocking technological advancement for so long in the name
of cartel-like protectionism.
gas subsidization is only for the first year (from the ads I’ve heard) and even the typical
moron that would have bought a hummer last year has got to be thinking twice about
doing it this year. Ford announced it’s closing F-series manufacturing plant(s) due to
horrific sales.
meanwhile the japanese automakers were quick(er) to adopt the technology and still
tend to use more american made parts and labor than the average domestic manufacturer;
apparently we didn’t learn our lesson from the first gas crisis, did we GM?
my father-in-law choked on his peas when he found out my toyota pickup had more
domestically sourced parts and more domestic assembly than the GMC and Lincoln in his
driveway combined.
Does this include a comparison to how much energy it takes to get oil out of the ground? Then refine it? And then get it to the gas station? At the very least oil will have some competition if/when hydgrogen takes off.
It’s time for the internal combustion engine to go the way of the dodo… it’s a prehistoric dinosaur of technology…
GIMME COMPSAND MICROTURBINE HOOP FINNED PENGUIN BOARDS OF DEATH!!!
LOL!
sorry yesterday was a late night… today was an early start…
“If efficiency can be high enough, small generating stations i.e make your own run off solar cells or wind generator? Then pretty green”
Seems like an obvious leap: solar on your house could fuel your hydrogen hybrid car. Most people’s roofs are just sitting there all day reflecting and/or absorbing energy in the most wasteful/inefficient way.
Wise use is saving petroleum for things we don’t have even the beginnings of answers for yet, and there’s lots of them.
It’s pretty sad/funny how many people in this country–just a couple of years ago–were emotionally (and more so, politically-) invested in wasting energy (resources) on a huge scale as (this is no joke–the VP was one of them) a national birthright. It should have made anyone skeptical about anything they say is necessary or right.